Faces of Death Reboot in the Works From Cam Filmmakers

Daniel Goldhaber will direct from a script by Isa Mazzei that centers on the female moderator of a YouTube-like website.

Cam filmmakers Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber are set to respectively write and direct a reboot of the grisly cult movie Faces of Death for Legendary Entertainment.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Legendary has acquired the rights to the faux-documentary with the goal of launching a new horror franchise, albeit one that will hew closer to psychological thriller territory rather than go the gory slasher route.

First released theatrically in 1978, the original movie followed a pathologist examining various ways to die via gruesome footage from around the world. Though most(!) of the death scenes were staged and faked by writer-director John Allan Schwartz, the film still caused a stir and was banned in multiple countries, especially once it was released on VHS in the ’80s and word-of-mouth began to spread among gorehounds. Faces of Death spawned numerous sequels as well as several imitators, and the original films remain in circulation thanks to Illinois-based distributor MPI.

To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of Cam, giving the film just two out of four stars back in 2018, but I’d be lying if I didn’t like Goldhaber and Mazzei’s pitch here. Their version of Faces of Death will follow a female moderator of a YouTube-like website whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content. She’s recovering from a serious trauma of her own when she stumbles upon a group dedicated to recreating the murders from the original film. The shocking discovery prompts her to find out whether the murders are real or elaborate fakes, which have become all too common in the digital age.

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Susan Montford and Don Murphy will produce under their Angry Films banner, while Rick Benattar of BT Productions will serve as an executive producer and Cory Kaplan will serve as a co-producer. John Burrud, who produced the original Faces of Death movies, will also be involved with Legendary’s reboot.

Legendary recently produced Godzilla vs. Kong, which has performed well at the box office despite its simultaneous debut on HBO Max, and the company is currently in post-production on Texas Chainsaw Begins, which is a new entry in the iconic horror franchise.

Cam was inspired by some of Mazzei’s own experiences as an online camgirl, and the Netflix film caught the eye of Quibi execs, who hired her and Goldhaber to work on the horror anthology 50 States of Fright. I can’t say I gave that one a look — vertically or horizontally — but seeing as the Cam filmmakers were surrounded by veteran genre storytellers on that show, I imagine they learned something valuable from the experience and will apply that knowledge to their sophomore feature.

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